After months of waiting and expectation, the long-awaited sequel to Gladiator arrived at my local cinema. I was characteristically early, too early, enduring the 20 minutes of adverts by gorging on my supply of popcorn and coke.

In an age where we worship at the altar of precocious youth, where Mark Zuckerberg's catastrophically myopic declaration in 2007 that "young people are just smarter" passes for wisdom, there's something deliciously subversive about the late bloomer.

In the fascinating array of Irish wildlife lurks a diminutive killer with the swagger of a medieval bishop and the murderous efficiency of a Sicilian hitman.

There's something rather splendid about watching the human machine wind down with all the grace of a Victorian music box that's been dropped down a flight of stairs.

The story of Irish Christianity provides a fascinating analogy to Ireland's current situation.

There's something guilt-inducing about watching a documentary on the making of a charity single designed to feed the starving masses of Africa while lounging on a well warmed sofa, picking at the remains of a pizza and sipping a cold beer.

Netflix's latest venture into the well-trodden field of narco-dramas, Griselda, enters like a Colombian caricature wearing last season's Versace and wielding a plastic machete.

In the voluminous annals of papal history, few tales are as grotesquely fascinating as the posthumous misadventures of Pope Pius XII, the Pope who led the Catholic Church through the tumultuous years of World War II and beyond.

There's a perverse pleasure in being terrified. We huddle in darkened cinemas, stuffing our gaping gobs with popcorn as our primal fears are prodded and our nerves frayed.

In the pantheon of true crime retellings, Ryan Murphy's latest opus, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, sits like a flashy, overwrought centrepiece - impossible to ignore yet equally impossible to digest without a strong constitution and a ...

A miracle awaits pilgrims in the tranquil, incense-laden air of Turin's Cathedral of St John the Baptist. It's not the kind that leaps out at you with trumpets blaring and celestial lights piercing the firmament.

When my doctor solemnly informed me of my high cholesterol, brandishing a prescription for statins like a sentence to culinary purgatory, I couldn't help but lament.

In the unfathomable mystery of gender, few habits perplex the average male, such as a woman's fervent devotion to a handbag.

In the grand tapestry of human experience, grief stands as a dark and luminous thread, binding us to the very essence of our existence.

When on the water op'd the lily buds,  And fine long purples shadow'd in the lake,  When purple bugles peeped in the woods  'Neath darkest shades that boughs and leaves ...

In the twilight of a Parisian summer, an unexpected beacon shone through the growing dusk as the City of Light prepared to light the Olympic torch.

Not so long ago, a dinner plate in Ireland was considered incomplete without a generous helping of potatoes. A savoury dish, stewed, boiled, baked, or grilled, was inevitably accompanied by a mound of chopped or mashed spuds.

In the genteel world of garden bird-feeding, where tits flit, and robins boldly go, there's always one who refuses to play by the rules.

Few events in Irish history have been as crucial as the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which, forged in the fires of conflict, promised a new dawn for a long-divided nation.

In Ireland's verdant fields and misty forests, a silent symphony of parental devotion plays out daily, unnoticed by most human eyes.